The Big Wave Festival, which featured longtime punk band Bad Religion as well as newer acts Panic! at the Disco and Yellowcard, was held on Sept. 20 at Bung Karno Stadium in Jakarta.

“It’s a sort of mini band festival, which we hope to be a regular event from Big Daddy in the future,” Jacqueline Losung, the sponsorship and marketing director for PT Prima Java Kreasi, which merged with the Big Daddy brand in 2010, said at a press conference before the show.

It was the first time in decades that a concert was held at the stadium after the 1990 performance of local band Kantata Takwa, which drew over 100,000. The Indonesian Soccer Association (PSSI) had said it feared the concert might damage the stadium’s newly renovated pitch.

 “For the Big Wave Festival, we predict the capacity [of the area used for the venue] to be 10,000,” Endang from Big Daddy said.

Just one day after the festival, the company held another event, a concert by alternative rock band Linkin Park as part of the band’s “A Thousand Suns” world tour, at the same venue.

Big Daddy’s future agenda includes a Richard Marx concert in October and a Disney Live! musical stage show in December.

Jacqueline said the Big Wave Festival aimed to feature genres that extend beyond rock music.

The choice of bands was based on information regarding which ones were in the region at the time the festival was slated to be held, she said.

Jacqueline added that profits would be channeled for philanthropic purposes, to help victims of the recent Lokon volcano eruption in North Sulawesi.

“During the negotiations the volcano erupted. We then had the idea of giving some of the Big Wave Festival’s revenue to charity,” she said.

Arif Ramadhoni from Big Daddy said the event only used around a quarter of the Bung Karno Stadium area. “We left the [sports] field undisturbed,” he said.

The stage was assembled in the jogging area, with propped up boards creating the festival area that was closest to the stage.

The festival area itself was separated into two parts. “It’s strange how they must put a separator [between the festival areas],” audience member Ferdian said.

Tickets were priced between Rp 200,000 (US$23) for the upper tribune seats to Rp 600,000 for the “yellow” seats, which were located behind the festival area but facing the stage.   

Bad Religion, whose frontman Greg Graffin is also a professor at Cornell University, and guitarist Brett Gurewitz, the founder of the prolific Epitaph Records, expressed their enthusiasm for playing in the country during the press conference as well as during their set.

“When we started in the 1980s we were a bunch of children and now, 30 years later, we are hopefully so much more mature … obviously we go through many changes, but there are things about punk rock that are universal. We were lucky enough to ask questions when we were teenagers and many of those questions are still relevant today,” Graffin said of the band’s decades-long career and the changes that have occurred within the band during that time.

The band cited guitarist Gurewitz’ work at Epitaph Records as the reason for his absence at the Jakarta show.

Florida based pop punk band Yellowcard were first in the lineup for the show, which began roughly on time at 7 p.m.

The band’s melodic music, which also featured violin, brought a rather mellow start to the show. But they built their way to an energetic pace over time and got the audience singing to songs like “Believe” and “Only One”.

The band, which just released their latest album When You are Through Thinking, Say Yes, were heading to Australia after the show to participate in the Counter Revolution festival.

Panic! at the Disco, which features more upbeat and dramatic songs, was an apparent favorite for the female audience members, who broke into screams now and then.

Liya, a high school student who came to the show with a family member, was one of them. “I want to see [Panic! at the Disco] perform ‘Ready to Go’,” she said before the band performed.

She got her wish. The band, whose flamboyant music is sometimes dubbed “Baroque rock”, opened their energetic set with the song.

At one point, a thumping introduction marked the band’s new hit “Hurricane”, which had the audience hyped up yet again. Singer Brendon Boyd Urie explored his vocal range at times with wails and shrieks, and the set finished in an appropriately dramatic manner with Urie letting out a final scream.

A pause after Panic! at the Disco performed provided a moment for some of the audience members to exit the venue and the crowd of mostly black-clad youths who were sitting near the further edges to make their way up front.

Bad Religion played a tight set and proved true to their word, having labeled their songs “very fast”.  The band played newer tracks such as “New Dark Ages” and “The Resist Stance” along with classics such as “I Want to Conquer the World” and the much-awaited “Generator”.

Graffin’s laid-back stage antics and jokes, at times in fact reminiscent of a professor giving an interactive lecture or a presentation, provided a complement to the fiery response from the audience.

The steady performance was spiced up further with guitarist Greg Hetson, who utilized the melancholic sound of his Les Paul to deliver the signature harmonious melodies of Bad Religion songs, which are sometimes labeled “folk-punk”. Hetson even dressed for the occasion by wearing a T-shirt apparently bearing a picture of Indonesia’s first president, Sukarno.

At one point the slam dancing and foot stomping proved to be too intense for the festival area, causing a crack in at least one of the boards. A waving hand appeared from the crack to warn the crowd, which then shifted away from the hazard.

After finishing their set, the band responded to the audience’s demand of an encore by playing three more songs: “Sorrow”, “Infected” and one of their most popular numbers, “American Jesus”.

The Big Wave Festival has inarguably succeeded in making a breakthrough by holding an on-time and peaceful rock show in a venue left untouched by rock concerts for 20 years.

However, the empty seats in the upper tribune section might serve as a reminder that rock audiences usually prefer to be either jumping up and down to the beat or sitting on the festival grounds rather than in tribune seats.

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